Flower of Time

Next year, by this time, we may be there, I may have a job, I will have paid back the loan, and we should have a house. My medications may be over and I may be well again. See, we are already in the future. There is an investment of time. This investment involves hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, and disappointment. Among these moments, some are opening to further events. All of them have something to fill into our life. As the title of J.T. Fraser’s book stands, Time is The Familiar Stranger. Are we running behind an arrow of time, are we being carried on a wheel of time? Or are we creators of time?

Time is unprompted. If we reflect on the spontaneity of time through the thoughts of Henri Bergson’s philosophy, the nature of time is ‘duration.’ Duration is not a measured sum of time stretched out between certain ends. Time is not a series of quantifiable moments ordered in a line; rather, it is a living, flowing entity that we experience only intuitively. Time is lived qualitative inner subjective experience.

Time is ever same, and every day is yet another day. It is true. But we experience passages of life; passages of day and night, birth and death and so on. So, passages invite us to newness, not because we may be wrong somehow, but to move into a qualitative human living. Understanding time as a living entity we can cherish the spontaneous nature of our experiences. Each moment of our lives, no matter how ordinary and familiar, carries its own depth and significance. There is beauty in it. What may come is not known. It permits us to flow with time, finding meaning in the unpredictability and chaos of life.  It encourages us to liberate ourselves from a rigid grasp of time.

Even many spiritual traditions confine time within a horizontal-linear framework. Our craze for the predictability of reality makes time so determined that even God cannot escape from human predictable outcomes. There is sin and punishment, blessing and prosperity, morality, error, and righteousness, all in one line with their causes and effects. These impose limitations on the richness of time.  This reductionist view strips away the dynamic and spontaneous essence of time. They overlook the complex and creative interplay of moments that constitute our lived experience. They may fixate on goals and endpoints, neglecting the significance of the journey itself, with all its nuances and spontaneity.

Often, we value time according to its utility toward a predetermined outcome. What is the use of ‘wasting’ time like this? Here time has become transactional. There we miss the inherent beauty of spontaneous existence; the joys, uncertainties, and unforeseen encounters.  It is in the appreciation of simply ‘being,’ presencing that we can be in the fluidity of time. Michael Ende, in his novel Momo, introduces time as a flower blooming from our hearts. It gradually unfolds. Time is an ever-unfolding tapestry, where each moment is interwoven with the past and the future, creating a rich tapestry of experience that defies any form of calculated and quantified form of time. Time is what we have outpoured for others. We cannot measure it, it can be known only by intuition.

We must begin with courage and hope; we must end certain stories; there are changes inevitable in our lives; there are doorways or passages we have to pass through. There is something sacred about it. These moments are not the same as other moments. The Roman god Janus, god of seasons, time and change, is often depicted with two faces looking into past and future. While we dwell in the present, it is an active blend of all our experiences shaped by our history and aspirations. Though time is seen as abstract, the lived time is complex and layered, demanding a deeper reflection on how we picture our existence within it.

Taking the spontaneity of time leads us to a celebration of life in its most authentic form. There we stand with the unfolding freedom of our hearts. Embracing such a view enriches our understanding of our existence; and fosters a more profound connection with the divine tapestry of which we are all a part. This tapestry of grace carries our events most beautifully, and fully immerse ourselves in the beauty of the now, experiencing it as a sacred and spontaneous gift. The beginnings and the end mark gateways archways, and thresholds that lead us to peace. If there is no peace, there is no grace of time. Time is born of Terra and Caelus, the Earth and the Sky. Peace, grace, and beauty of time unfold as we have a harmonious living with the earth and the sky.

Time is a familiar stranger, but time has a name, Logos, the Word, the beginning and the end, the origin and purpose of all things. Logos is the passage through which all pass, the threshold at which everyone must make a transitional choice for peace, harmony, beauty and goodness. In Logos, every being unfolds and finds one’s truth. In logos one reveals and opens a petal of time. As the Word unfolds, so too does time.